Askeal AI Cybersecurity Assistant Launches

Askeal, an AI cybersecurity assistant, launched its beta in February 2026. The startup, co-founded by Roxane Suau in August 2025 and backed by a $1.1 million pre-seed round, combines AI with a network of expert contributors to provide evidence-backed answers for manual security investigations.

Roxane Suau leads the company. She emphasizes the community aspect over the technology. “It’s an AI cybersecurity assistant powered by community expertise, but we often drop the AI part because the community is what makes it unique,” she told the source. The tool is designed to sit alongside existing security platforms, drawing on a wider pool of intelligence than a single vendor's knowledge.

How the assistant investigates threats

Users interact with Askeal in natural language, attaching files or evidence like suspicious URLs or log files. The assistant analyzes the information against its sources. For a CVE, it gathers related technical research, proof-of-concepts, and patch information before providing a risk level and recommended actions. For a URL, it returns verdicts from vendor tools, checks phishing databases, and provides associated campaign intelligence.

The system pulls from both private contributor feeds and open-source sources. It will leave a section empty if no relevant information is available. “We are not afraid of letting a section empty if there is nothing relevant to share,” Suau said. Beyond answering questions, Askeal supports log analysis, threat detection, hash lookups, and security configuration tasks.

The expert community behind the answers

Askeal's knowledge comes from a manually vetted community of contributors. Every contributor is approved against criteria for expert-level knowledge before joining. More than 90 contributors joined in the first two months of the program, adding to an initial base of 178 public sources.

After human vetting, a layered AI review scores the quality and technical level of submitted content. When a user asks a question, the system corroborates answers from multiple sources. Contradictions are preserved. If one expert source calls something safe and another calls it dangerous, both views are presented to the user. Users can also rate answer quality to provide feedback.

The underlying neuro-symbolic technology was developed with cybersecurity and AI researchers in collaboration with the Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics.

Targeting the manual investigation gap

The product is positioned for security professionals who still conduct substantial manual work. Suau argues that while vendors claim AI-driven SOC automation can close 70 to 85 percent of tickets without human intervention, practitioner forums describe a different reality. Manual investigation persists, with analysts at some managed security providers reviewing 50 or more alerts daily.

Askeal aims to fill that gap by enriching the decision-making process for the person doing the investigation. In the long term, Suau sees the tool feeding enrichment data into automated SOC platforms. For now, it works directly with the investigator.

Growth and commercial focus

The beta launch rapidly exceeded its goals. The team aimed to onboard 300 testers in three months but reached 500 in just two and a half months. This early community spans 69 countries and includes 14 different IT and security roles.

Commercially, Askeal is focused on medium-sized companies and managed security providers, where teams often lack capacity or specialized expertise. For example, a SOC analyst can start the day to 50 alerts requiring manual review, a scenario where Askeal's stats on threat intelligence could be crucial.

Current access and future plans

Askeal is currently free under a freemium model. Anyone can ask a question without an account, but answers are trimmed. A free account provides more features with daily credits. Paid plans are coming, and with them a revenue share model that will pay contributors a percentage based on how often their expertise is used.

The free tier will remain in a reduced form after the official launch. The company's $1.1 million in funding is supporting its push to market and international scaling. For now, users can test it with a domain, log file, or CVE to evaluate its sources and see how its community standings in providing reliable data.